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Dublin to Belfast: Northern Ireland

Video we made of our first day in Belfast Northern Ireland

We woke up super early and checked out of our hostel in order to catch our bus to Belfast. We booked our tickets with aircoach online from Canada. We boarded the bus on O’Connell Street in down town Dublin at 7:30am (the bus stopped briefly at Dublin airport) and we arrived in Belfast at 9:50 am. The trip was easy and I would recommend booking with aircoach. It cost us 11 euro for the trip! For reference the route we took was the 705X (express).

Belfast street art

We arrived in Belfast around 10 am and started the 15 minute walk towards our hostel. We were a bit early for check in, so we stopped for breakfast along the way. The first thing we noticed about Belfast was that the street art scene was going to be incredible ( I will make a post just about that).

street art in Belfast Northern Ireland

After dropping off our bags, we set off to see the Peace Walls that separate the Republican and Loyalist areas of Belfast. It was about a twenty minute walk from our hostel. The gates that separate these two areas are still used at night, and we were a bit afraid, following the Brexit decision, that this area might be on high alert. However, at no point did we feel unsafe, but I would not recommend visiting this area at night or during any sort of turmoil.

From here we walked towards the central area of Belfast. We came across some bizarre sketchiness along the way, (I’ll keep it at that) something that we would expect to see in our own home town. There had been a big fire only a few days previous in central Belfast, so most of the downtown was blocked off. So feeling a bit uneasy, we stopped off at a pub to grab a beverage and settle ourselves a bit.

Fire in Central Belfast Northern Ireland Head art?? At the pub Much needed pint of stout and cider

We decided to head towards the docks after our break, and see the Titanic museum. This was just what we needed! The docks ended up being our favourite part of Belfast.

The dry docks were a nice change of pace, and the sun was blazing down. We had a delightful stroll towards the Titanic museum. For those who don’t know, the Titanic, (amoung many other significant ships) was build here in Belfast Northern Ireland.

Titanic Museum Belfast Ireland.

We then walked back to our hostel, stopping along the way to eat fish and chips at a dive bar (it was delightful and the bartender suggested an Irish beer that I should try). We would have to wake up super early the next morning for our tour of Giant’s Causeway.